Master of Orion

Saturday, July 28, 2012

Game Name:

Master of Orion

Platforms:

DOS

Publisher(s):

Microprose

Developer(s):

SimTex Software

Genre(s):

4X empire game

Release Date:

1993

Notes:

GOG.com has it bundled with the sequel

Of all the possible game types out there to write about, the 4x genre is the only one that intimidates the hell out of me. It took me two years to finally be satisfied with the Civilization review, simply because I knew these were popular games that many people already knew the ins and outs of. Coming in as a newcomer with a “fresh perspective” seems more likely to just recycle issues veterans have already debated to death, or demonstrate some total ignorance by overlooking some important aspect of the model. So, it was with great reluctance that I installed Master of Orion – starting a series I knew dick-all about, and winding my way through its various versions and clones. To put it another way, the only empire-building space game I’ve ever played is Star Wars: Rebellion, so you’re about to be in for a real treat…

The “huge” galaxy size lives up to its name.

Like many of the early computer greats, “MOO” (yeah…) takes its cues from old strategy board games. In particular, Stellar Conquest from 1974 sets up many of the ideas seen here, along with the early Commodore 64 sim Reach For The Stars from 1983. These empire builders also share quite a lot in common by nature of the systems they simulate, so it wouldn’t be entirely unfair to call this “Civilization in space.” You will pick a starting race with diverse inherent bonuses (increased production, diplomacy, espionage, etc) and colonize an ever-expanding swath of the galaxy out from your starting world. Along the way, you’ll need to figure out how you want to handle your galactic neighbors, and also be prepared to deal with whatever they choose to throw at you.

On starting a game, you define your difficulty level, the size of the galaxy you’ll play in (small to huge), and the number of other races you’re competing against (up to five). The Huge setting drops 108 planets onto the board, making for very long games with a substantial number of turns before you even see a scout ship from another race (I never actually met the fifth race in my first game). Difficulty mostly affects aggression and speed at which other races up their technology and production in relation to you. On the lower difficulties, everybody’s pretty much chill little Fonzies as long as they have room to grow. On the harder difficulties, you’ll be up against some assholes that will go to war simply because they see your race as an inferior blight on the galaxy, while also dealing with increased random disasters, from earthquakes to space monsters.

Planets are generated randomly at the start of the game, and vary in atmosphere type and maximum population. The total population of your empire is the single biggest factor toward winning the game (everything stems from it), so planets that support more people are obviously more valuable. The atmosphere type determines when you and your opponents will be able to colonize the planet – harsher planets like toxic, irradiated, or dead will require tech upgrades first. Planets can also randomly have a modifier to population growth, industry, or research. Rich and ultra rich planets can double or triple your returns, making those planets a particular prize.

Use the sliders to balance production, growth, research, and defense.

When you’ve colonized a new planet, the first order of business is to grow your population. You can’t do much of anything until at least 10 million colonists are around, so you’ll need to either wait for this point to slowly grow, or send an influx of settlers from your other nearby worlds. Colonists build industry, and as long as you spend resources to manage factory waste, industry and population can grow at the same time. Once the planet is generating a respectable amount of industry, that resource can be turned to ship building, generating research points, or building up planetary defenses. Later research will let you terraform planets or allow more factories per colonist, so you’ll be revisiting these allocations even after you’ve hit the maximum population or industry for that world.

Sliders for each planet control how much industry is going toward each area, and naturally, it’s a balancing game to optimize them for that moment in the planet’s development. Fortunately, and unlike Civilization, each planet doesn’t act as a build queue that must be micromanaged. Spending industry to generate more industry always seems to be a good idea, and generating research points is as important as (if not more so than) building your fleet. As long as you don’t poison your own population with waste, these planets can churn on their own for quite a few turns, while automatically building and contributing to the potential strength of your empire.

Research is the direction of that strength, and is broken into six different categories with 50 inventions per. All generated research points go into a central pool, which is then divided among project categories by a separate page of sliders. Most areas of research aren’t even military in nature. Planetology lets you colonize new world types and enhance the planets you already own. Construction makes industry cheaper and cleaner. Propulsion helps your scout ships extend their range. Computers raise the maximum number of factories per colonists. It’s all useful, and can even be traded to push alliances or appease your warlike neighbors.

Pleased to meet you on behalf of the — JESUS GOD YOU’RE A GIANT INSECT!

So while the first Civilization was a game of strictly military conquest, diplomacy and science can absolutely win the day in Master of Orion. Non-aggression pacts and alliances can be signed with the other races (and the AI will actually abide by them), trade routes with exponential returns can be set up, and some level of trust (monitored by a meter on the Races tab) can be built up over time. The system has the potential to keep other races off your back and out of your turf while you focus on researching the best gear or maximizing your planets – just as long as you keep expanding. Again, population is the ultimate key to both research and industry, and you will need to planets to keep things growing. Of course, so will your enemies, so galaxy-wide war is inevitable when the uncolonized planets run out.

Fortunately, MOO is also quite capable in combat. As ships are built, they are organized into fleets around the planet that made them. These fleets can only be sent to other planets (there are no engagements in deep space), where they will encounter opposing fleets or planetary defenses. Space combat is a fairly simple, turn based routine where you maneuver ships into weapons range and fire at the vessel of your choice. Some planet or asteroid tiles can offer cover. A wide variety of possible tech covers the damage you do, the damage you resist, and even how many moves each ship has per turn. More advanced ships can cut down entire armadas of smaller or technologically inferior craft.

Ground combat is even simpler, with the number of troops sent rolling invisible die against the number of existing colonists, plus whatever tech bonuses each side has. Hardened ground defenses can be softened up though. Ships equipped with bombs can attack from orbit, however, more industry will get destroyed than defending colonists (thus weakening the value of the captured world). Biological weapons can be researched to kill the population of a world while keeping the industry intact, at the cost of becoming a galactic pariah for using them.

Designing a swanky new ship class. You can only have six at a time, and must scrap older designs to build new ones.

Interestingly, you never research new ships. Instead, you research new components, and then design your new units by packing in whatever components will fit. There are four chassis of increasing size you can choose from, with increasing weight limits (and increasing costs). Engines, shields, countermeasures, armor, and weapons are all added individually, along with special equipment like colony bases or reserve fuel tanks. You’ll have to balance what you want with what will actually fit, and almost always make compromises. Though you could stuff it all into a battlecruiser, the cost (and thus, turns needed to make it) will likely be prohibitive, forcing you to scale down to smaller, specialized vessels. Fortunately, as your research level in each category increases, the older tech gets refined and “miniaturized,” letting you build more equipped ships as you go on.

There are two ways to win the game. If you run the board and colonize every planet, you obviously win for being the last empire standing. The other, diplomatic way is through the Galactic Council. After most of the planets have been colonized, the Council convenes every 25 turns. Here, each race votes for the “Galactic Emperor” out of the top two races. Total empire population determines how many votes each civilization gets (population returns yet again!) and a 2/3rds majority vote wins. Races you’re friendly with are more likely to give you their votes, though total power also plays a role, and your rival can (and will) vote for themselves. If you’re not in the running at all, you can vote strategically or abstain altogether to push the vote off for another 25 years.

The final consideration is the Orion of the title. One of the generated worlds will always be Orion – a world with the remnants of an advanced civilization. Whoever controls Orion gets a massive research boost, plus the ability to research exclusive technology not on the tech tree. The Master of Orion will thus have access to the best tech in the galaxy, and a serious boost to their campaign in the Galactic Council. The catch is the Guardian. The Guardian is an automated death bot of otherworldly power that will take extremely advanced tech and a sizable fleet to destroy. He’ll carve up anything you throw at him until very late in the game, so Orion becomes more of a final chance for the underdog to tip the scales, or for the ruling emperor to cement their lead.

Space combat is turn-based and tactical in its own ways.

There’s a lot to keep track of, but a clean and uncluttered interface makes this easy. Races are distinctly color coded, with ships and colony names showing accordingly on the main galaxy map. Any of them can be clicked on for more detailed information, or to give your own ships instructions. Information pages are smartly divided into six categories running along the bottom of the screen. Each of those categories is kept to one main page, so the information and controls you need are right there the first time. Especially helpful are the Fleet and Planet lists which give you a quick layout of status without having to hunt around the map to find them. Sure, it’s difficult to keep track of hundreds of planets and ships, but that’s more because that’s a lot, and not a fault of the interface.

Graphically, information is well-presented and designs are smart. Ship icons are surprisingly distinct, with different designs based on the color (flag) you choose for yourself at the start. Races are creative and distinct, most apparently when meeting with giant versions of their emperors in the diplomacy screen. You can even watch their expression change if something you propose has offended them. My only real complaint is that you can’t change the zoom on the main galaxy map. There’s a galaxy-wide version that’s a bit too small for the Huge galaxy type, and scrolling inside the fixed zoom default takes a fair amount of clicking. It’s not a serious issue by any means though, just a clear point where future versions and better graphics tech can improve the interface.

Five difficulty levels, along with the random nature of the game, help with the replayability. The biggest change per game comes from who you’re facing, and each race has been given a distinct “personality” that the AI will follow. The only disappointment is that, without species-exclusive technology or abilities, there’s little practical difference in playing as the different races. The overall simulation also isn’t as minutely detailed as something like Civ, so you won’t need to worry about corruption, the actual buildings of your colonies, or need to manage the mood of your civilians – if you want to uproot 12 million of them and ship them off to your new colony in the galaxy’s asshole, their bags are packed!

Overall, it’s a great start to a series that would help make conquering space a popular genre. Like any freshman effort, there’s certainly room for improvement, but what’s modeled here works well and is legitimately engaging. A functional diplomatic path to victory offers appreciated variety, the ability to design your own units is very cool, and AI with different race behavior and actual respect of your peace treaties (and that doesn’t cheat!) all make MOO great fun to play. Later, graphically enhanced games probably do the very same thing better, but original MOO isn’t a bad way to kill a weekend… or three.

About the Author

The J Man loves him some video games, of all eras and types. Finds them, plays them, then writes about them here for curious future generations. Follow him on Twitter at @BurningStickMan for even more musings and questionable life decisions.

10 Comments

As I mentioned elsewhere, Masters of Orion II was the only PC game I got seriously addicted to — as in, staying up til 5am playing when I had to be at work 3 hours later (not bad for a single-player game). I fortunately got rid of my copy, and am recovering nicely 8 years later (one day at a time…).

I played a lot of Masters of Orion 1 in college, but I don’t remember it as much now (though seeing ANY of those ship icons trigger strong memory flashbacks!)

The 2 biggest difference I remember when I started playing MOO2 is:

-it had better diplomacy (I don’t quite remember how — more involved, more low-level gradations of friendly gestures you could make?)

-and it had more distinct colony tech upgrades — as in, when you finish researching “better production device X”, you actually have to build one on each colony to get the upgrade. But the nice thing is that, when you look at each colony, it shows all the various devices that have been built there, so you can tell at a glance what of your advances it has implemented. (Conversely, when its bombarded from space, various upgrades are blown up and the picture goes away)

Also I kind of disagree with the “every species plays the same”…when you start upping the game’s difficulty, you really have to live or die by playing to the strengths of your species bonuses (as in, if you’re one of the war-bonus-only dudes like the Mrrshan, Alkari or Burathi…you better be at war a lot of the time!). Then again, that could be more evident with longer play, or maybe more in MOO2 than the 1st game.

I didn’t mean to imply they “all played the same,” but uniform tech upgrades mean they’re not as distinct as they could have been. Remember, my experience goes as far as Rebellion, but in that game, the Rebels and the Empire were drastically different factions. Not only did they have different inherent bonuses (military might vs espionage and diplomacy), they had entirely different units, which radically changes your tactics.

In MOO1, you do want to follow what your species is best at. But, your end result is always going to consist of war with the same gear.

I’ve briefly booted up MOO 2. I see they added a zoom (yay!) and see that stars now represent systems. Each star has just a single planet in MOO1, so the idea of multiple planets in a single system seems deliciously complicated!

I can only agree with most of this review. I’m especially happy to see you appreciate some of the same things as I do – in particular the lack of stupid micro management. MOO is so much better in this respect than its so-so sequel: No endless management of production queues (Which wouldn’t even make sense, because… building /one single factory/ on planetary level? Seriously?), being able to fulfil more than one task at the same time etc.

I don’t even agree with the first poster that the diplomacy was improved in the second game. There are more options, sure, and these would be nice. Almost the complete diplomacy stuff has become virtually unusable, though, as the AI races don’t seem to follow any dependable scheme anymore. It even happens that you are at total harmony with another race, in an alliance, but when you ask them to attack your enemy (who has declared war upon you, so you’re not even the aggressor), they will attack you instead!

It’s really a pity, because the second game adds some really good stuff as well. Nevertheless, it’s less playable.

Thanks, Creo! I always figure you’ll be the one to call me out if I screw up a strategy review (good, cause I need that!), so I’m especially pleased that you feel I represented MOO well. What were the things you didn’t agree with though?

Still personally curious about MOO’s sequel, but it may be time for Civ II first….

Oh, I wouldn’t go as far as saying I really *disagree* with anything in the review. It’s more a question of identifying priorities of the game and small shades in wording

So, for example, I think you’re stressing a bit too much how the AI does not cheat too much. Although this may be true compared to many other games (which I guess is what you’re getting at), it’s not really correct – the AI does receive quite big production bonuses in the early game on harder difficulty levels. Also, their level of aggression is not just dictacted by the difficulty level, but the most major factor in my experience is the size of your own empire as well as your own level of aggression (including acts like amassing fleets along the borders).

Which leads to the importance of population, something which you rightly get into, but I also believe you overstate. The most tense and dynamic games I played had me only commanding a small empire. Try it, if you restrict your own empire size it will be much easier to find dependable allies, for example. Diplomacy and trading technology becomes much more important, the game becomes even less of a straight war game.

Last, but not least, I personally prefer the shared technology tree of the races. It not only makes sense from a scientific point of view (it would make sense to have some races to have bonuses in some fields of research, but ultimately, everyone can discover any scientific principle), but it also makes cooperation/trading/diplomacy more important once again.

All fair points, and I actually didn’t know/notice that the A.I. was smart enough to react to fleets on its borders. It impresses me once again!

My first game in a Huge galaxy was as the humans, with the intent of playing a diplomatic game. My empire ended up being rather small (10 planets or less) – especially compared to the Klackons. I did manage alliances with most and non-aggression pacts with the rest, but the ultimate peaceful plan still fell apart.

The Bulrathi just outright turned on me and broke our pact (I wasn’t even conducting espionage or otherwise troubling them – it may have been an alliance I had with another race). Then those alliances I was in – and counting on for Council votes – went to war with other races and expected me to honor the alliance. Either I had to lose one partnership by declaring war, or refuse to join my ally and lose them. So it became a military game again, and on top of which, I lost many of the votes I had earned through diplomacy. Lost the Council race to the Klackons based on – you guessed it – their enormous population.

So that’s where my statement came from. Granted, I haven’t played hundreds of matches (a bit outside the scope of this site!) but I don’t see how population won’t be the ultimate deciding factor. Alliances will be tested well before the final council vote, and it didn’t appear that you could form an alliance with the largest or most powerful race – which makes sense, because they’re ultimately your competition in the Council.

Population is one major factor, no doubt about it. The story of your game reminds me of yet another great feature of the game: The choice to defy the council vote. If someone else is elected, you can choose to fight this new (fixed) alliance of everybody else. This has worked for me at times. I shiver at the memory of Imperialism, another basically fine game, which does not allow this – often declaring players who are basically already beaten the victor.

How is MOO not a 5-star game?
I got a copy of this game in high school and have always managed to replay it over the years (thanks to DOSbox). It’s simplicity is what makes it perfect, engaging without being tedious which is where the sequels failed. (well 2 wasn’t that bad but my god was 3 a terrible game)
Anyways, love reading the reviews, and I know this is old,but my jaw dropped when I only saw 4-stars

You bring up a good point though. I prefer to start any series at the beginning, so I usually haven’t played games further on in a series – and depending on the genre, I haven’t played many other games in that genre! So these aren’t always “retrospective” reviews in the expected sense. I truly don’t know if this is the best in the MOO series, and I don’t know how it stacks up to others in the genre. It’s almost like I’m writing this back in 1993.

Still, I stand by the flaws I pointed out. If it turns out they never get addressed later in the series, does that mean MOO deserves 5 stars? Or are those flaws still legitimate complaints? I’d like to think the latter.

I don’t intend to ever revisit a review score, but all the above does create a conflict I’ve been running into lately.